


Back Stage

by gala_apples



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe- Millionaires, Dancing, Hand Kink, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of bodies and time counted in seconds, Pete has found something that anchors him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back Stage

Pete works back stage for almost all of the productions at Undone Studio. He gets paid according to what a company can pay him, which is generally nothing. His friends don’t understand it. Joe and Andy are content to let a nutjob do what a nutjob wants to do, but Patrick protests. Pete can’t count the amount of times he’s heard Patrick tell him he should put a price tag on his time and effort.

In Pete’s opinion, that’s stupid. He’s a freaking trust fund kid. He’ll never have to get a job or do any labour in his life. Patrick says all the more reason to get paid properly, because he knows better than the common man what a task is worth. Sometimes Pete thinks of Patrick as one of those handled magnets tailors own, so when they drop a container of pins they don’t need to pick each one up individually, the pins just jump to the magnet. Money jumps to Patrick and the rest of the Stump family, and Patrick cares far too much about making sure he never loses his polarisation.

Joe and Andy are different sorts of rich people. Joe is a mellowed version of his father. Mr Trohman is so fucked from the decades of speed and acid and anything else that he or his roadies could get their hands on that he can’t even remember how to use the remote control. Joe’s not that bad. The vast majority of his allowance goes to what they joke about as Hefty size bags of weed. Pete doesn’t partake, not often at least, but at least Joe’s not harming anyone, or even himself, really. Andy is a cause driven child of fortune. He’s forever convincing everyone around him to donate money to any possible environmental group. He talks it up with putting their beautiful face on it, or that it’s taxable, or even that it’s fashionable to pretend to care. Pete and Patrick and Joe know he’s not pretending.

Pete can’t catalogue what sort of rich person he is. Besides useless, he knows he’s useless. Sometimes he fees like he’s so inconsequential he could just blow away like a seed off a dandelion and no one would even notice. He tried it once, the lone car in a parking lot.

His therapist - top quality of course, paid for by Mom and Dad like everything else Pete’s ever gotten- told him to get involved in things that helped weigh him down. After searching, taking long enough that there were talks about vacations -nobody rich would dare call it a trip to an asylum- Pete found something. People’s bodies help. Performance art, or dancing, or moshing, or fucking. If Pete can take in the movement of others there’s something in his soul that settles. He doesn’t know why and his therapist tells him not to over think it. So he doesn’t. He just walks through downtown hoping to stumble upon break dancing, or gets on a full bus and watches as people try not to fall over at each stop. He’s got a membership to a dozen clubs, and goes out each night to try to keep himself alive.

When he finally decided he really wanted to get involved -therapist safely neutral, like no one else in his life she was paid to not have an opinion- he had phoned a theatre at random and asked if he could volunteer. Apparently that’s not the sort of thing that gets turned down. With a combination of bluster and sheer desperation he’d managed to get himself behind the stage, instead of alone and transparent inside the box office.

This run is an all male ballet troupe, they call themselves Summer Tour. It’s ballet, so most are tall and thin and Pete would be lying if he said he didn’t get turned on by seeing them walk around back stage in black spandex tights. But it’s a stereotype to say that all ballet dancers are queer. Over the span of stage rehearsals Pete’s seen enough of them being met by girlfriends to know the vast majority are straight. He’s not going to start anything that will probably get him turned down, and will most definitely get him kicked out of back stage.

It’s sort of stupid, really. He gets to watch as a dozen men flit around the back, quickly touching up make up that seems horribly garish but is needed just as much as strong shoes, some stripping to change into their next costume. There’s nothing sexual about it, but there could be. There _should_ be, Pete’s got a cluster of half naked men asking him where he put the hunter green tights because they’re not folded on the desk like they were last night. But he doesn’t care about the waving dicks, or the chests gleaming with sweat. Hell, he doesn’t even care about the muscular legs and feet as strong as an elephant’s.

Instead Pete likes their hands. There’s something about the fingers of some of these men, pinching into cotton balls as they pad on orange powder so they don’t appear white as ghosts to the audience. Something about the way they grip their feet as they extend their leg straight into the air. Something about how they’re long and thin like every other limb, and it makes Pete want to curl them into his arms and tell them they’re loved at the same time as he wants to suck on them, and that dichotomy is a heady feeling.

So he thinks he can be forgiven when he watches Frank leap into Reggie’s upraised arms and notices Mikey and Gabe have stayed in the wings. It’s nothing abnormal, by Pete’s count they have three minutes before they need to hold hands and twirl onto the stage together. What is strange is the lime fabric of Gabe’s pants is stretched to the point of snapping, because Mikey’s hand is thrust down them.

Pete should look away. He knows he should. It’s none of his fucking business. His job is to make sure the props are waiting where they should be, to make sure there are bottles of water waiting. It isn’t to ogle the performers and get involved. And yet he can’t move from his spot.

“If you can see them, they can see you, remember?” Gabe’s whisper is loud enough for Pete to hear, though they’re nowhere near enough for the audience to. Mikey’s head snaps to the side, but Pete thinks they’re safe. They’re too nestled in the red fabric of the wings to be seen. It takes moment after Mikey looks in the other direction, at him, for Pete to realise that Gabe’s not talking about the audience.

“You’ve got a hundred and fifty seconds,” Pete whispers back. To his friends it would be pathetically specific. To those that live on the stage, breathe in beats and talk on cues, it means something.

Gabe’s nod of his head means something too, and Pete finds himself walking forward and joining them. Mikey’s left hand never stopped working Gabe, but Pete takes his right and raises it to his mouth. He licks his palm and bites on the heel. Gabe’s arm raises and clutches onto the red velvet wall. The fabric ripples just the slightest bit, nothing that should be noticeable from the seats on the floor but Pete’s heartbeat sky rockets. He rotates Mikey’s hand so he can nip his wrist, then moves up. Gabe’s hand is spasming in the curtain and Pete sucks on Mikey’s knuckle.

He doesn’t know if Gabe comes. He knows that across the stage Ray leaps into the wings and Mikey and Gabe just _feel_ the movement. Mikey takes Gabe’s hands and they’re spinning onto stage-left like nothing happened. Pete watches them for a moment before he makes sure the make up is organised. It’s six minutes until Mikey’s off, and Pete has a job to do, just as much as those on stage.


End file.
